This invention is related to medical ultrasonic diagnostic imaging, and more specifically to methods that compose multiple substantially coplanar image frames into an extended field of view image.
Extended field of view imaging is disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,286 (Weng), as well as in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/196,986 and 09/196,987, both assigned to the assignee of the present invention. These patent documents disclose several different methods for aligning successively acquired substantially coplanar images to form the desired extended field of view.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,910,114 (Nock) discloses a method for correcting the geometry of ultrasonic images acquired with a moving transducer. The disclosed method uses scanning parameter information beyond the information contained in the acquired images themselves.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/196,986, naming the same inventors as the present application, recognizes that transducer motion can be a source of distortion in the acquired images.
A need presently exists for improved methods for assessing and correcting transducer motion distortion in acquired images used for extended field of view imaging.
By way of introduction, the preferred embodiments described below provide methods for accurately determining the distortion caused by transducer motion during the acquisition of multiple substantially coplanar images for an extended field of view. The methods described below significantly reduce dimensional errors in the extended field of view image, thereby enhancing the dimensional accuracy of the multi-frame, composed image.
The present invention is defined by the following claims. This paragraph has been provided merely by way of introduction, and is not intended to define the scope of the following claims.